Merge Records Immortalized With Book, Dance Performance

Superchunk's Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance founded Merge Records in a rented home office in 1989. 20 years later, Merge is one of the biggest and best indies in America. The label is home to Arcade Fire and Spoon and Conor Oberst, and it has certifiable classics like Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs in its catalog. That's a story worth celebrating, and it's a story that's going to be celebrated.

On July 18, the Triangle Youth Ballet will kick off the Merge XX festivities with "Merge With Motion", a dance performance that will use tracks from Arcade Fire, Magnetic Fields, Spoon, Destroyer, Polvo, Caribou, and others as its soundtrack. The performance will take place at the Carolina Theatre's Fletcher Hall in Durham, North Carolina. It'll feature a performance from the Rosebuds, who will debut a new musical work specifically composed for this show.

And on September 15, Algonquin Books will publish Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small, a chronicle of the label by music journalist John Cook, written with help from McCaughan and Ballance. The book will include interviews with plenty of people who worked with the label over the years, and it'll feature "extensive profiles" of Merge bands like Neutral Milk Hotel, Arcade Fire, Spoon, the Magnetic Fields, and, of course, Superchunk. Ryan Adams wrote the introduction.